JudicialWatch recently published a government memo directing Border Patrol agents to release unlawful foreigners driving drunk, a policy that is a serious threat to the safety of law-abiding Americans. In response, Fox News interviewed Mary Ann Mendoza, the mother of a Mesa Arizona police officer who was killed by a drunk driving illegal alien last May.

Officer Brian Mendoza (pictured) was on his way home from work when his car was hit head-on by a blotto drunk Mexican who had driven 35 miles the wrong way on the highway. The Mexican had been previously arrested for burglary and assaulting a policeman in Colorado, but was not deported.

So Mary Ann Mendoza was angry at the preventable death of her 32-year-old son and wrote a letter to the President:

“President Obama,

“I am writing this letter to you regarding illegal immigrants.

“As a tax paying, law abiding citizen of the United States, I WANT my voice heard on this issue. My son, Sergeant Brandon Mendoza, an officer who was with the City of Mesa, Arizona police department, was killed in a tragic head on collision on May 12, 2014 by a wrong way driver on our freeways. This man happened to be an illegal immigrant, was in this country illegally, convicted of previous crimes, no Social Security number, no valid driver’s license BUT he had purchased a vehicle and registered it to drive in Maricopa County Arizona.

“I had my son’s life STOLEN from me by a man who didn’t value his life, was 3X the legal limit drunk, was high on Meth, drove for over 35 miles THE WRONG WAY on 4 different freeways and had NO BUSINESS BEING IN THIS COUNTRY!!! [. . .]

The Obama administration has ordered federal agents responsible for protecting one of the nation’s busiest and most crime-infested regions near Mexico to stop apprehending drunk drivers, according to an internal government memo that also concedes an officer that elects to detain them is “acting within the course and scope of his employment.”

Obtained by Judicial Watch this week, the notice is titled “Enforcement Options With Alcohol-Impaired Drivers” and directs the 4,000-plus U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Tucson, Arizona sector to “release” individuals under the influence and “allow them to go on their way.” The document acknowledges that this feels counter-intuitive for Border Patrol agents, but eases concerns by answering a hypothetical question for the officers who have sworn to uphold the law: “If you allow this driver to continue down the road and they kill someone, aren’t you liable?” The answer is no, according to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo. “There is no legal requirement for a Border Patrol agent to intervene in a state crime, including DUI,” the order says, adding that “therefore there is generally no liability that will attach to the agent or agency for failing to act in this situation.” Continue reading this article

Senator Jeff Sessions has a fine publishing operation in his office, demonstrated by his occasional fact sheets of well researched points regarding the failure of Washington to stem immigration anarchy.

Now Senator Sessions has presented the mother of all lists, scary in its length, that enumerates the instances of President Obama dismantling America’s immigration enforcement system. It was posted on Breitbart on Feb 16:

In September 2011, President Obama said, “We live in a democracy. You have to pass bills through the legislature, and then I can sign it.” Yet, since that time, and indeed before then, he has systematically voided existing laws and unilaterally created new measures that Congress has refused to adopt under either Democratic or Republican control.

Most recently, the President announced he would do what he once said only an “emperor” could do – grant unilateral amnesty, work permits, and access to government benefits to more than five million illegal immigrants. This unprecedented action, combined with new “enforcement priorities” for Department of Homeland Security personnel that exempt the vast majority of illegal immigrants from the threat of removal, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals directive, the “Morton” memos, and numerous other lesser-reported but far-reaching Executive actions, has threatened not only our constitutional system, but our national sovereignty. Indeed, the idea of national, sovereign borders is being daily eviscerated by the President’s determination to write his own immigration rules in defiance of Congress and the American people.

Below is a detailed timeline of how the Obama Administration systematically dismantled immigration enforcement, undermining the very rule of law upon which our nation was founded and upon which its greatness depends.

January 2009: Obama Administration Ends Worksite Enforcement Actions

In early 2009, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executes a raid (initiated and planned under the Bush Administration) on an engine machine shop in Bellingham, Washington, detaining 28 illegal immigrants who were using fake Social Security numbers and identity documents. Shortly thereafter, pro-amnesty groups criticized the Administration for enforcing the law. An unnamed DHS official is quoted in the Washington Times as saying, “the Secretary is not happy about it and this is not her policy.” Instead of enforcing the law, the Secretary investigates the ICE agents for simply doing their duty. Esther Olavarria, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, says on a call with employers and pro-amnesty groups that “we’re not doing raids or audits under this administration.”

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano delays the original deadlines for federal contractors to use the E-Verify system, from January 15, 2009, and February 20, 2009, to May 21, 2009. Continue reading this article

The case is painfully familiar to many others in the government’s normal inattention to public safety when illegal aliens are concerned. The killer, Mexican alien Raul Corona (also killed in the crash), was clearly a dangerous man. He had been charged with assaulting a police officer and burglary in Colorado, but was not deported. When sentenced, he was given probation and allowed to stay in the country, despite his attack on an officer.

“As a tax paying, law abiding citizen of the United States, I WANT my voice heard on this issue. My son, Sergeant Brandon Mendoza, an officer who was with the City of Mesa, Arizona police department, was killed in a tragic head on collision on May 12, 2014 by a wrong way driver on our freeways. This man happened to be an illegal immigrant, was in this country illegally, convicted of previous crimes, no Social Security number, no valid driver’s license BUT he had purchased a vehicle and registered it to drive in Maricopa County Arizona.

“I had my son’s life STOLEN from me by a man who didn’t value his life, was 3X the legal limit drunk, was high on Meth, drove for over 35 miles THE WRONG WAY on 4 different freeways and had NO BUSINESS BEING IN THIS COUNTRY!!!

“The Federal Government knew he, Raul Silva Corona , was an illegal immigrant when he was convicted on crimes in 1994 in Colorado. The prosecutors were “lenient” on him and several charges were dismissed. When he was convicted of these crimes and 1994 and the government knew he was in the country illegally, why wasn’t he deported? Why are any of these illegal criminals in this country ??

“I am furious that the Federal Government allowed this criminal to stay in this country and KILL my son! I have attached several articles for you to PERSONALLY read about my son. He was an Icon with the City of Mesa Police Department. He was instrumental in making life better for people of all walks of life in the park project he took on. He was humble, selfless, worked many hours off the clock helping disadvantaged children and often used his own money to do things for the community, including “adopting” children at Christmas to provide them with gifts….out of his own money!! Continue reading this article

Following a promise from the Presidente to make deportation more “humane”, the administration has decreed that “petty” criminals can benefit from Obama’s executive amnesty.

Who hasn’t seen this coming? More “humanitarian” deportations weren’t going to include better sandwiches for Pancho during his trip home: obviously enforcement standards had to fall lower.

But it’s worse than that: there are no standards. “Petty” crime has no definition at all, so it’s whatever some bureaucrat wants it to be. Is theft no big deal? What about carjacking? Is drunk driving a petty crime?

Is not every immigration bill worse than the last when the Democrats are major authors (and many Repubs are just as bad)? The problem is the Raza open-borders extremists are pulling the legislative strings and they do not act in good faith.

Are you an illegal immigrant whose waiver to stay in the country was denied because of your criminal past? Well, you’re in luck, because the Obama Administration may let you stay in the country anyway.

In a guidance distributed to congressional offices and obtained by The Daily Caller, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it is reopening cases in which applications for provisional unlawful presence waivers were denied to criminals.

According to the notice, USCIS had determined that applicants should not be denied an I-601A waiver due to a past criminal offense so long as it “falls under the petty offense or youthful offender exceptions or is not considered a crime involving moral turpitude.”Last week, USCIS began reopening waiver applications denied due ’solely’ to a prior criminal offense before January 24, 2014, “in order to determine whether there is reason to believe the prior criminal offense might render the applicant inadmissible.”

Fewer than 0.2 percent of the 11.7 million illegal aliens in the United States were deported in 2012 for violating immigration laws, according to data released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“It is a drop in the bucket,” Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Caller. “Relative to the [agency] resources and tools they have been given to do this job, it is a record low,” said Vaughan.

Government officials say they deported a total of 368,644 people. But almost two-thirds of those people, or 235,093, were caught at the border and promptly returned to their home countries.

Only 133,551 resident illegals were picked up in the interior of the country and deported, the ICE report admitted.

But 82 percent of those residents were deported for other offenses, ICE acknowledged. Those offenses include drunk driving, assault, robbery and drug possession.

The remaining 18 percent adds up to only 20,000 illegals of the 11.7 million illegals believed to be living in the United States.

That’s only one immigration-law deportation for every 585 illegals. [. . .]

Meanwhile, liberal propaganda organs continue to pump out emotional tripe based upon the self-created problems of lawbreaking foreigners.

The opening act was a nine-year-old boy who complained of living in fear because his father might someday be caught and deported. The office janitor dad wasn’t in jail or especially in danger because of American immigration laws, but just the slight possibility of deportation was considered a cruelty worthy of sympathy by the largely hispanic audience.

The Washington Post found a similar worried little boy in order to purvey its sob story:

Below, illegal alien Jorge Penate resides in Virginia with his wife Diane and son Jason.

It’s too bad for the kid. It’s tough being 12 and knowing your father might be sent back to Guatemala — although a deportation is unlikely after all this sympathetic publicity.

Twelve-year-old Jason Penate spent the holidays hanging close by his father. They picked out a Christmas tree and decorated the front window of their Gainesville, Va., home with candy canes, and Jason tried very hard not to think about whether his father would still be here in the new year.

Jorge Penate, a Guatemalan national who came to the United States illegally in 1997, has a hearing scheduled Monday that will determine whether he can stay in the country. A drunken driving arrest two years ago launched deportation proceedings and cast his family’s future into uncertainty.

Jason wrote a letter to the immigration judge, explaining that the three days his father was detained in 2011 “were the worst days of my life” and asking not to be separated from him again. “If he does have to leave I think every day of my life is going to be the worst,” Jason wrote.

More than 1 million illegal immigrants were deported in the past three years, a record number reflecting increased enforcement efforts under the Obama administration. The crackdown has spun the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens — including children like Jason — into upheaval. Continue reading this article

Last April, Maxey Ann Lynch (pictured) was killed by a drunk-driving illegal alien as she was doing her job of Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper carrier. Her car was struck head-on by Guatemalan Santos Gabriel-Tomas driving the wrong direction, and she died later in the hospital.

Not only was his blood-alcohol content 0.19 percent (more than twice the legal limit), he also had no license to drive due to his illegal alien status.

Worse, this crime was entirely preventable because Gabriel-Tomas had been convicted in March 2012 of drunk driving, but was not deported. In a nation that cared about public safety, drunk-driving illegal aliens would be deported as a matter of law, but that is not the case here.

An intoxicated, wrong-way driver who pleaded guilty to the killing in April of a Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper carrier in South Hill had been convicted of DUI a year earlier and had never been licensed to drive in Virginia.

Santos Gabriel-Tomas, 30, an immigrant from Guatemala in the country illegally, was convicted in March 2012 of driving under the influence of alcohol in neighboring Lunenburg County. He had never acquired a license to drive, but a judge in the earlier case revoked his privileges to obtain a license for 12 months as part of his punishment, Mecklenburg County Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Allen Nash said.

After the suspension period passed, Gabriel-Tomas continued to drive without a license and was doing so when he crashed head-on April 7 into a car being driven by longtime Times-Dispatch carrier Maxey Ann Lynch, 61, who later died at VCU Medical Center. Continue reading this article

This story is all too common: a previously arrested (but not deported) drunk driving illegal alien takes the life of an innocent American. Had the government repatriated Osvaldo Cerda after his several marijuana arrests, he wouldn’t have been here to kill Heather VanHoozer, a 24-year-old nursing student.

Below, the VanHoozer family in happier times: parents Alan and Debra with Heather in the center. Heather was killed by a drunk driving illegal alien a year ago.

A local TV report discussed the illegal alien aspect, unlike too many news accounts when the perps are border-jumping foreigners.

Like many average citizens faced with a preventable death at the hands of a foreigner who should have been deported, the VanHoozers are shocked and surprised that their government did so little to protect their family. But in the new globalized America, foreign lawbreakers have more rights than upstanding citizens.

Heather VanHoozer died 11 months ago in a terrible crash on Centerville Road in Garland. She was 24 years old.

Police said Osvaldo Cerda, then 18, was drunk when he T-boned the car of Heather’s boyfriend. According to the police report, even after the crash, a witness saw Cerda put a beer can to his mouth, then toss it down and crush it before running away.

Did La Raza’s cartel division help write S.744? The notion that government’s top job is to protect public safety has been diminished greatly by the open-borders extremists.

Fortunately the criminal-friendly aspect of the bill is beginning to come to light. The legislation allows a great deal of discretion to the DHS Secretary about who may be deported. For example, if a drunk driver’s removal might cause inconvenience to his US-residing familia, he could be permitted to stay, despite the obvious danger to Americans.

The video above mentioned a couple of preventable deaths, one being that of Phoenix Police Officer Daryl Raetz (shown below with his wife and five-year-old daughter), killed by a hit-and-run driver, an illegal alien with priors.

But to the Gang of Eight and other friends of diverse crime, the preventable deaths of Americans killed by criminal aliens are unimportant, so the plan is to lessen the immigration enforcement that protects public safety.

As the House and Senate continue to debate overhauling America’s immigration system, new differences are emerging between the two chambers over how to handle criminal illegal immigrants.

The controversy is emerging after two police officers were killed, allegedly by illegal immigrant drunk drivers with prior DUI arrests.

“There are thousands of Americans killed intentionally and accidentally by illegal immigrants who have already been arrested and could have been deported from the U.S.,” said Kris Kobach, an attorney representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who claim the Obama administration is preventing them from deporting law-breakers.

In Houston, police say 23-year-old Andres Munos was driving drunk on May 20 when he struck and killed 47-year-old Sgt. Dwayne Polk, a Harris County sheriff’s deputy. Munos, who is in this country illegally, was previously arrested in 2010 for drunk driving and unlawful carrying of a weapon.

In Phoenix, Jesus Cabrera-Molina admitted he was drunk and high on cocaine the night his SUV struck and killed Phoenix Police Officer Daryl Raetz — but he denies he was behind the wheel. Witnesses disagree, and Phoenix police have charged Molina with manslaughter.

Under a House bill now being debated, drivers like Munos and Molina would likely get deported immediately by ICE or local police, who would have the authority to enforce federal immigration statutes.

Under the Senate bill, however, illegal immigrants accused of non-violent crimes are entitled to a hearing and a taxpayer-funded lawyer. Those with three or fewer misdemeanors and some felonies would be allowed to remain if they had children or wives in the U.S. Continue reading this article

Meatpacking used to be a middle-class job for Americans, illustrated in the 1990 Academy-Award-winning documentary American Dream, which showed Minnesotans fighting to maintain their wages and benefits at Hormel which had cut them despite healthy profits. Companies later discovered that illegal alien foreigners were happy to work for peanuts, and wages were lowered accordingly. However, in the years following, occasional spurts of government enforcement proved troublesome, so the meatpackers turned to refugees to take the hazardous, poorly paid jobs. (See the 2008 report, Legal Somalians (“Refugees”) Replace Illegal Mexicans At Swift Plant.)

The latest influx courtesy of the Refugee Industrial Complex is the importation of Burmese into Iowa, home to many meat processing plants.

Interestingly, local Mexicans are miffed at the importation of non-hispanic diversity. As doctoral student Christina Ortiz observed, “But in a certain sense, they are in competition with each other. They are applying for the same jobs. They have the same skills. And that’s tricky. Obviously there is some tension there.”

Didn’t the Mexicans get the memo that Diversity Is Our Strength?

Other diversity symptoms have included drunk driving, public urination and unhealthy barracks-like living conditions among the newbies. So enriching. Four hundred non-English-speaking refugees in a town of 1899 residents (2010 Census) is a huge burden on schools and social services, despite all the happy talk.

If the reader objects to the government’s reckless refugee program to replace citizens with compliant foreigners, don’t forget that the State Department is accepting remarks from Americans on the topic. The occasion is an annual meeting, with the deadline for written statements being May 8 — that’s Wednesday!

COLUMBUS JUNCTION, Iowa – The first Chin Burmese student arrived at Wilma Sime Roundy Elementary School three years ago, a smiling preschooler whose father often checked on his progress.

The school had long been accustomed to educating the children of the Mexicans, Hondurans and El Salvadorans who came to work at the sprawling Tyson Foods pork processing plant that sits outside this town of 2,000. But then, principal Shane Rosenberg recalled, Tyson informed school leaders that a new group of workers was coming — the Chin, a largely Christian ethnic minority who were fleeing their homeland in western Myanmar to avoid persecution.

A trickle of Chin students turned into dozens. Frustrated educators struggled to communicate, often having to call the pastor of the Chin church to interpret. Rosenberg intervened to ease the way, using grant money to hire one of the Chin to translate to and from the Hakha language. And he invited Chin parents for a welcoming ceremony and tour of the school.

“It was an awe-inspiring moment, for them to see the opportunities their children were going to have by being here in school,” he said.

All told, about 400 refugees have descended on the town, and more are arriving by the week to reunite with friends and relatives and work grueling jobs for Tyson. Like other waves of immigrants, they were drawn to this poor, sparsely populated region of southeastern Iowa by the promise of jobs, good schools and welcoming people.

And as was the case with other waves of immigrants, there have been bumps along the way.

“We’ve had a lot of experience with Hispanic cultures, but for all of us, the Burmese thing is new. There’s no one around that is an expert in that area or knows the language or this and that. That whole transition has been interesting,” said Mayor Dan Wilson, a businessman who grew up on a farm outside town. He said the influx has been more easily noticed in Columbus Junction than elsewhere: “It’s more obvious in a small town when you’ve got 200 new people coming in. You’re not going to blend in here. You’re going to stick out.” Continue reading this article

America as a nation of laws is rapidly slipping away before our eyes. Even dangerous criminals are not deported, turning the idea of public safety into a sad relic.

Those familiar with the problem of illegal alien criminals know of the cases where drunk driving illegals were not deported after their initial arrests, and went on to kill innocent Americans like Denny McCann, three-year-old Marten Kudlis, Sister Denise Mosier and many others.

Now the goalpost has been moved back considerably, with a foreign kidnapper being allowed to remain in America despite the obvious danger to the public. Not that long ago, kidnapping was considered a very serious crime. In 1960, California kidnapper Caryl Chessman was executed for kidnapping.

In what may seem like a bad joke, a U.S. federal appellate court has spared an illegal immigrant convicted of kidnapping from deportation ruling that it’s not necessarily a crime of moral turpitude.

The decision, issued this week by the famously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, rambles on for 27 pages and is almost comical. “This undoubtedly appears to be a difficult question at first glance,” it reads. “Kidnapping is a serious crime, and our instincts may be that it would meet the moral turpitude definition. Even for serious offenses, we must look to the specific elements of the statute of conviction and compare them to the definition of crimes involving moral turpitude.”

The case involves a Mexican man named Javier Castrijon-Garcia who entered the United States illegally in 1989 and incidentally has three American-born anchor babies. He has twice been convicted for driving with a suspended license (yes, California gives illegal aliens driver’s licenses) and in 1992 pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping. He received a suspended sentence of 300 days in jail and 36 months of probation.

Years after the kidnapping case, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally earmarked Castrijon-Garcia for removal. He appealed but an immigration judge found that he was deportable because the kidnapping conviction is a categorical crime of moral turpitude. The Board of Immigration Appeals, the government’s final authority on immigration matters, agreed noting that it had previously listed kidnapping as an example of a crime of moral turpitude and that California’s penal code also defined it as involving moral turpitude. Continue reading this article

Government-subsidized National Propaganda Radio (NPR) has a fawning update on the travails of foreign lawbreakers in Prince William County, Virginia. There was a crackdown a few years back, it reports, but the pests, er undocumented, have been straggling back, and NPR generously explains their struggles, while ignoring the citizens who demanded the law be enforced.

Aside from the entirely preventable death of Sister Denise Mosier and the mass murders, the general quality of life of Prince William County had declined enormously since the influx of the lawless foreigners.

A 2008 Washington Post report had surprisingly honest descriptions of what citizens endured:

The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home is gone from Carrie Oliver’s street. So are the neighbors who drilled holes into the trees to string up a hammock.

Oliver’s list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in their Manassas area neighborhood, she would take a trash bag and he would carry a handgun. No more. “So much has changed,” she said in a gush of relief, standing with her husband on a warm summer evening recently outside a Costco store.

But today’s report from NPR is cheerful about the county becoming majority minority and it looks forward to more hispanic participation in politics.

In 2007, when Virginia’s Prince William County ordered police to check the immigration status of anyone they had “probable cause” to suspect was in the U.S. unlawfully, the impact was swift at family restaurant Ricos Tacos Moya.

“Suddenly nobody showed up,” says Stacey Moya, an employee, and daughter of the owner. “Nobody was around. Not one soul. We would go hours without any customers, any clients. Nothing.”

After community protests, the policy was soon watered down. In fact, police only check the status of those they arrest for a crime. Still, the stigma around the resolution stuck. Moya says one of her family’s restaurants went under. And while business at this one has picked up, it’s not the same.

“Not even on weekends after church,” she says. “Nowhere near what it was before. I guess nobody likes to be around in the public that much.”

Next year Congress is expected to again take up immigration reform, something it tried, but failed, to pass in 2006 and 2007. The collapse of those efforts prompted a number of cities and states to adopt their own regulations aimed at driving out illegal immigrants. But years later, it can be hard to tell just how much impact they had.

For one thing, Prince William County’s immigration crackdown coincided with the tanking economy. It’s hard to say which hurt more — police checks, or disappearing construction jobs. But one thing the policy aimed to address has not completely disappeared.

Demographic Shift Continues Outside a 7-Eleven, just near the Moya restaurant, undocumented day laborers still gather. Twenty-eight-year-old Apolinar — who would speak only on condition we not use his last name — says he came here three years ago from central Mexico.

The older brother of the Milford man whose death in a motorcycle accident spurred furious debate about illegal immigration has announced his intention to run for selectman this spring.

Michael Denice, 26, who lives at 22 Debbie Lane, has taken out nomination papers and has set up a Facebook page about his candidacy.

If Denice makes the ballot, he would likely face Dino DeBartolomeis, who is seeking his 11th term on the board.

“The citizens of Milford need a voice on town issues. I have seen many changes occur in Milford over the past several years, including a rise in crime, an increase in immigration-related issues and a decline in the local economy and businesses,” Denice said in a statement. “We need selectmen that will not only work for the people, but more importantly work with the people in the community.”

Denice is the brother of Matthew Denice, 23, who police say was dragged to his death Aug. 20 by a pickup truck driven by Nicholas D. Guaman, an Ecuadorean who is in the country illegally. Police say Guaman was drunk when he hit Denice, who was riding his motorcycle at Congress and Fayette streets.

Guaman has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while driving, motor vehicle homicide while under the influence, among other charges.

At a September forum in Town Hall designed to clear the air about the local Ecuadorian community, Michael Denice chided Ecuadorean officials, complaining that illegal immigrants have to work under the table, cannot drive with a legal license and must violate other laws just to stay in the country.

“What is your solution for those illegal immigrants already here today?” he asked, prompting a standing ovation from a crowd at Town Hall.

Miscellaneous

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